Posted on 08/17/2020 1:29:24 PM PDT by Mount Athos
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So MLB cannot even find an American to staff their call center? Baseball- American as apple pie.
Right.
There’s also Strategy in Test Matches because a team needs to determine when they think they’ve scored enough runs, because they need to allow the other team to bat. You only win a test match if you retire the other side twice, regardless of how many runs you are ahead. So a lot of times, if a team knows they can’t catch up, they basically “bunt” and try to survive Day Five, so the Test Match ends with a “no result”.
I was born in Sydney but grew up here. I got to do that or it was called the Bicentennial series in 1988 (maybe not the Ashes not sure) so it was a tour throughout Australia. The SCG is considered hallowed ground. My mother told me stories of her going with her father there way back. I consider it part of my heritage. That said she became a baseball fan with me til the day she died.
From the Sept. 19, 2011 issue of ESPN The Magazine:
And now, baseball is killing it.
THAT STORY BEGINS, as so many tales in modern American sports do, with Babe Ruth. History records various games in which "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played dating from the mid-1800s, but Ruth's last postseason appearances for the Boston Red Sox coincided with the song's first unbreakable bond with the sports world, in 1918. Game 1 of that year's World Series was notable for many reasons...There was also World War I, which blackened everything, including the national pastime. The U.S. had entered the war 17 months earlier, and in that time some 100,000 American soldiers died. Veterans who survived often came home maimed or shell-shocked from encounters with modern warfare's first mechanized mass-killing machines. At home, the public mood was sullen and anxious. The war strained the economy and the workforce, including baseball's. The government began drafting major leaguers for military service that summer and ordered baseball to end the regular season by Labor Day. As a result, the 1918 Series was the lone October Classic played entirely in September.
World War I wasn't the only issue weighing heavily on fans. On Sept. 4, the day before the first game, a bomb ripped through the Chicago Federal Building, killing four people and injuring 30. The Industrial Workers of the World were thought to be behind the attack, a retaliation for the conviction of several IWW members on federal sedition charges...
Although the Cubs festooned the park in as much red, white and blue as possible, the glum crowd in the stands for Game 1 remained nearly silent through most of Ruth's 1-0 shutout victory over Chicago's Hippo Vaughn. Not even the Cubs Claws, the forerunners to Wrigley's Bleacher Bums, could gin up enthusiasm...
With one exception: the seventh-inning stretch. As was common during sporting events, a military band was on hand to play, and while the fans were on their feet, the musicians fired up "The Star-Spangled Banner." They weren't the only active-duty servicemen on the field, though. Red Sox third baseman Fred Thomas was playing the Series while on furlough from the Navy, where he'd been learning seamanship at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago...
Upon hearing the opening notes of Key's song from the military band, Thomas immediately faced the flag and snapped to attention with a military salute. The other players on the field followed suit, in "civilian" fashion, meaning they stood and put their right hands over their hearts. The crowd, already standing, showed its first real signs of life all day, joining in a spontaneous sing-along, haltingly at first, then finishing with flair. The scene made such an impression that The New York Times opened its recap of the game not with a description of the action on the field but with an account of the impromptu singing: "First the song was taken up by a few, then others joined, and when the final notes came, a great volume of melody rolled across the field. It was at the very end that the onlookers exploded into thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day's enthusiasm."
The Cubs front office realized it had witnessed something unique. For the next two games, it had the band play "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the seventh-inning stretch, to similarly enthusiastic crowds. By Game 3, a bigger crowd of 27,000 was in attendance. Not to be outdone, the Red Sox ratcheted up the pageantry when the Series relocated to Boston for the next three games. At Fenway Park, "The Star-Spangled Banner" moved from the seventh-inning stretch to the pregame festivities, and the team coupled the playing of the song with the introduction of wounded soldiers who had received free tickets. Like the Chicago fans, the normally reserved Boston crowd erupted for the pregame anthem and the hobbled heroes. As the Tribune wrote of the wounded soldiers at Game 6, "[T]heir entrance on crutches supported by their comrades evoked louder cheers than anything the athletes did on the diamond..."
Still, the Series' most enduring legacy belongs to a song. Other major league teams noticed the popular reaction to "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1918, and over the next decade it became standard for World Series and holiday games. In subsequent years, through subsequent wars, it grew into the daily institution we know today...
Congress didn't officially adopt the "The Star-Spangled Banner" until 1931 -- and by that time it was already a baseball tradition steeped in wartime patriotism. Thanks to a brass band, some fickle fans and a player who snapped to attention on a somber day in September, the old battle ballad was the national pastime's anthem more than a decade before it was the nation's.
-PJ
Astros fan from 1968 to 2020. I suffered through so many 1 run losses it was pathetic.
No more. Suck it up buttercups. I will not be insulted by millionaire kids that are playing a sport.
I’ll go one further, I’m DONE with pro sports, happened gradually starting years ago. Now I have more time and money to actually DO things.
“I’ll watch a Jane Fonda movie before I watch MLB, NFL, or NBA.”
May I recommend the first 10 minutes of “Barbarella”.
“The decline of televised major league sports was definitely in full swing by the 1990s. These recent anti-American outbursts are nothing more than the owners, broadcasters, and carriers trying to get a financial bounce out of a dead cat.”
Maybe not so much with baseball
https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2002255
After a long layoff, and amid some scheduling issues due to COVID-19, Major League Baseball’s TV ratings are improving.
Through the third weekend of MLB action, 39 million unique viewers have watched 59 telecasts (661,017 per game), compared to 26 million over 45 broadcasts (577,777 per game) through the same period in 2019, according to Nielsen data MLB provided to Stephen Battaglio of the Los Angeles Times.
While that shows slight growth, ESPN’s national MLB telecasts are averaging 1.2 million viewers, Battaglio notes. That’s up 29% from last season’s numbers.
Perhaps most encouraging is the rise in viewership among the 18-34 age group. ESPN has seen a 64% increase among men and an 83% uptick among women in that demographic.
Additionally, four million viewers watched the first game of the shortened MLB season on July 23 - Washington Nationals vs. New York Yankees - the highest regular-season total on any network since 2011.
Fans still aren’t allowed to attend games, though there have been some rumblings about opening ballparks before the end of the season.
Although I am not supposed to say it, our household is a Neil$on r@tings home. We got our checks today in fact.
No baseball in this house.
RE: what they paint in the dirt is beside the point.
It’s not beside the point to the guy who wrote the article.
that guy needs a midol, and I said so. you edited that part of my reply out of your post.
MLB hired a dot Indian VP of Technology. Most Americans working for MLB Advanced Media are being replaced by dot Indians.
Just something to know.
that guy needs a midol, and I said so. you edited that part of my reply out of your post.
Imagine a baseball batter having to bat for an hour and a half, without so much as making a strike, or hitting a lazy popup. That’s basically what a good Cricket batsman has to do, in order to get 100 runs.
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Crap sport played by dot Indians. Not interested.
I edited it out because it was irrelevant. It appears you believe he has no reason to complain about BLM/Marxist messages being painted on the field because foreign advertising bothers you more - a peculiar position to take, but have it at.
you edited it out and then referred to it’s absence. flat-out.
blm isn’t on every field. I pointed out two in which it’s missing. the angry guy that wrote the article needs a tampon.
Back in 1968 when the Detroit Tigers were playing Saint Louis I was just a grade school kid. I remember our public school teacher, a woman who brought her own television set to class so we could all watch the Tigers World Series games.
As I remember it all of us kids, boys and girls watched thinking this was an important event in our lives, and actually it was. Perhaps now more than ever that is true.
If baseball and professional sports has lost some portion of it's connection to the innocent youth it once controlled, so be it. Obviously the future is as elusive as it always has been, never saw that pitch coming did ya.
-PJ
After 1994, I stayed away from baseball for 7 years. I missed the Atlanta Braves only World Series win in that span. Didn’t care.
I expect my absence this time will be longer...
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